


Untitled Katniss/Avox Girl Ficlet

by rubyboys



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/F, Gen, Implied Katniss/Lavinia, Mild Horror, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 21:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11090685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyboys/pseuds/rubyboys
Summary: ~ Their eyes meet, and the redheaded girl’s eyes are wide, and almost severe in their certainty. She means to be here, entirely. Means every kiss. ~





	Untitled Katniss/Avox Girl Ficlet

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little look into the moments between the Avox girl and Katniss, before the games when the Avox girl helped Katniss tidy her bedroom. More notes at the end!

Katniss doesn’t ask for the girl’s name. 

She feels it would be offensive, another punishment for the redheaded girl to have to mime or spell out a name that was stolen from her by Katniss’s cowardice and negligence. As well as that, the Capitol have ears everywhere--they bug the districts, why not bug hotel rooms? They are limitless. Godly. 

And Katniss feels that so powerfully at this moment, standing cold in the large, white bedroom she attempted to destroy, watching the Avox girl silently and methodically reorganise. The Capitol can do whatever they like. Katniss’s little acts of rebellion mean nothing to them. They can just force other rebels to fix whatever mess she’s made. 

She’s powerless. They’re both powerless, Katniss and this Avox girl. 

Katniss doesn’t cry, but she keeps shivering (as if this light chill is anything compared to numbing nights at home), and is surprised when the Avox girl guides her by the hand to sit on the bed. She pulls the blanket up around Katniss’s shoulders--the way Katniss does to Prim, when Prim gets panicky--and lets her sit and watch while the girl sweeps and tidies. 

Katniss sits, watching on and working hard to keep her expression neutral. Her tiredness shows in her heavy blinks, and her frustration in the purpling dents she’s left in her bottom lip. Somehow, she feels that if she got up to help, the girl would just sit her back down again. The girl is being kind. It makes nervousness stir up in Katniss’s belly, yet another confusing emotion piled atop of everything else; another emotion to crush down and ignore. 

Once the room is tidy again, cleansed of Katniss’s pointless little rebellion, with broken ceramic in the trash, and the bedsheets pulled tight, the Avox girl stands by the door. Katniss is uncertain of why--does she need to be dismissed? Why does she hesitate? 

Katniss opens her mouth, and words rise up hoarsely. “You can go if you want to,” she says. Truthfully, the company is almost nice. Someone who doesn’t exhaust her, like Haymitch, or Effie, or even Peeta. Even Cinna, as comforting as he is, exists purely to keep her quiet and obedient until she’s thrown into the Games. The Avox girl has her own function, her own purpose, as shocking and poisonous as it is. She chooses to be around Katniss. She has no motive in helping her. Most likely, she resents Katniss. 

It’s refreshing. 

The girl doesn’t leave, then, and Katniss inhales sharply. She is exhausted, for so many reasons, but somehow captivated in this moment. Maybe the Avox girl isn’t a friend, not like Gale, or even Prim, but she’s here. Standing there, just looking at her. By choice. 

She approaches. Sits beside Katniss, and they are close now, thigh against thigh, eyes meeting. The girl takes Katniss’s hand, interlocking their fingers, and guides Katniss down to lay back. Katniss’s toes barely brush the floor now, and the bed is soft and sinking beneath the weight of their two, twined bodies. 

The girl’s skin is so strikingly different in colour from that of Katniss; her white, freckled arm lain across Katniss’s brown, scarred stomach. 

Katniss tries to find what it is that she feels--fear, uncertainty, maybe security? Whatever it is, the feeling is foreign and bizarre; it feels almost too sweet, too gentle, for being here. 

But against Katniss’s hand, she can feel the calluses of the girl’s fingertips. 

The girl kisses Katniss on the forehead. Once, and then again, light presses of her mouth. In any other circumstance, perhaps Katniss would feel adored, loved, by all of these kisses, but everything’s just too twisted and wrong. 

A moment from what feels like years ago flickers back, just behind her eyes. The soft press of Madge’s kiss against her face, before Madge left quickly, eyes cast down. Madge had kissed her, just briefly, after she gave Katniss the mockingjay pin. It was such a small moment in the midst of a wholly icy and appalling experience that she barely registered it. Didn’t remember until now. 

And here Katniss is now, cocooned in the arms of a slave to the Capitol, feeling the comforting, sweet press of mouth to her forehead, again and again. Kiss upon kiss upon kiss, replacing each one Katniss lost when her father died and her mother faded and Katniss had nobody to kiss her. She can’t make sense of it, but still. She doesn’t want it to end. 

Their eyes meet, and the redheaded girl’s eyes are wide, and almost severe in their certainty. She means to be here, entirely. Means every kiss. Perhaps she means to kill Katniss in this embrace, in revenge. Katniss doesn’t care. What a blissful way it would be to die, close and intertwined with the girl she couldn’t save. Their final rebellions against the Capitol. An Avox to murder a tribute. A tribute to escape the Games before they had even begun. And, as for Prim and Gale and everyone else… At least they wouldn’t have to watch it. 

The girl raises their hands together. Moving Katniss’s hand away from her stomach to expose a weak point for stabbing, probably, Katniss thinks idly, and lets her hand go with the girl’s. Their hands are the same size. 

But then the girl takes Katniss’s fingers, never gently but always slowly, calmly. She puts the fingertips to her lips, and moves her own hand to Katniss’s hip. 

They are locked now, in this strange position. The air between them doesn’t seem to move, there’s no breathing. Just bodies flush together, and Katniss’s hand poised to open the mouth of the Avox girl. 

The girl’s lips are pink, thin, and punctuated with a small brown freckle. She has no scars on her face; there is nothing, nothing, to suggest that she could be a slave, a traitor, an Avox. 

And then she opens her mouth, and Katniss’s thumb pulls at her lip slightly, just to see better, and there is nothing there. 

Teeth, and mottled pink flesh at the base of her mouth, and no tongue. 

Horror coils in Katniss’s stomach. They didn’t just cut her tongue off. They opened her up and removed the whole thing. They left her with nothing. Her mouth is empty. 

The Avox girl meets Katniss’s eyes unflinchingly, but the same cannot be said for Katniss. Her gaze lands on the floor, where the white carpet sinks beneath their feet. She’s never walked on a carpeted floor before, never slept in a carpeted room. Does the Avox girl? 

Horror turns into anger, and breath twists brokenly in her throat. 

I’m sorry, she thinks. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. 

She doesn’t say it. What she says is, “I was a coward for not saving you.” And then, with a thought to that fact that some Capitol officials may be listening in somehow, “You deserve better than this.” 

The girl’s expression doesn’t change, but her mouth closes, and her thumb rubs slowly, over and over, on Katniss’s cheek. Katniss isn’t crying, but if she was, she’d want this girl to wipe it away and kiss it better. 

This girl is fierce. Her spirit is unbroken. Or, perhaps, like Katniss--broken, and then rebuilt, harder and safer. She is a version of Katniss that survived the horrors of the Capitol, continues to survive them, and keeps that rage quietly in her eyes. Maybe one day, she’ll get away. Maybe, if Katniss lives, somehow, maybe they’ll see each other, again. In the woods, they’ll meet again, and there’ll be no interference, no Capitol, no Gale, even, and they’ll meet and know that they are both so much more than the pawns they act as. 

It’s a stupid dream, but. The girl is here, their legs entwined, and Katniss can’t imagine this moment ever ending. Can’t understand how she feels so safe, here, all of a sudden, in this hellish place. 

I don’t want you to leave, Katniss thinks, and bites back on saying it. What does that imply? How selfish can she be? She frowns, and chooses silence instead. She says nothing, but feels her thoughts hanging over them, loudly. 

If the girl cares about the silence, she doesn’t show it. She threads her fingers into Katniss’s hair, and Katniss relaxes, just slightly, against her. 

They sink together into the quiet, close, and without answers to their questions.

**Author's Note:**

> I literally NEVER write in first person. But the books are, and I was like well. I gotta. But it was super bad. I totally lost confidence in what I was doing to the point that I couldn’t complete a 500 word fic exercise, so. Not today, but maybe someday in the future I’ll feel more sure in writing first person without feeling like it’s total rubbish. So this is in third person, from Katniss’s perspective, and I hope you enjoy it! Please comment if you liked it <3 
> 
> Also another note, I’ve literally only read the first book, and I only just finished it recently. I’ve seen the films but didn’t really love them, but I found the book stunningly good. So forgive me if my canon details are a little sketchy. I did do some googling but you know :)


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